Health promotion aims to engage and empower individuals and communities with language needs to choose healthy behaviours, and make lifestyle changes that reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases and other morbidities. It combines health education with support for behaviour change and enables people to increase control over, participate in and improve their health.
SIS service users are among a demographic of people suffering from the greatest health inequalities and fared the worst during covid. Language and cultural barriers make it difficult for them to access information about their health in a format that is easily understood and challenging to get access to appropriate support for behaviour change.
SIS uses our language specific website pages and Facebook pages to share translated information about local and national public services, healthy living initiatives, physical and mental health conditions, and other wider determinants of health. We also use SMS messaging to keep our Service Users informed about public health initiatives and campaigns.
During the period May 2021 – August 2023 we were funded by NHS Sussex ICB to deliver a Bilingual Health Promotion Project comprising six interconnected workstreams combining elements of community development, partnership working and volunteer management to deliver health promotion, social prescribing and community engagement.
